Ambulance Requirements and Deployment

Abstract

The problems associated with determining the need for and deployment of emergency vehicles add to the consideration of location efficiency the dynamic problems of dispatching and relocation idle units as a result of the activity of others. Although many aspects of this applications are common to all emergency vehicles — fire, police, rescue, etc. as well as ambulance — each had its own unique characteristics.¹⁾ For example, fire engines rarely respond to alarms singly, police are often on moving patrol, etc. The applications discussed here are those concerned explicitly with ambulances and not with the general problems of emergency vehicles. In this, a more restrictive view of the problem area is taken than that of REVELLE ET AL. (1977) who provide a current and excellent review of models which have or could address the deployment cf emergency medical vehicles.